Abstract

This technical report evaluates the interaction between users and a cognitive handheld robot, a type of personal robot that operates in the tool space. The objective is to investigate the effects that sensing and task knowledge have on task performance.
To this effect we devised a new robotic platform that has 4 DOF and uses a cable driven lightweight tentacle-like structure. In this implementation feedback from the robot to the user is provided in an intuitive, implicit manner by the robot pointing towards, avoiding pointing and or refusing to perform an action when conflicting with the task specification. We evaluate with a number of user volunteers in two generic tasks involving aiming in space and picking/dropping objects. Statistical significance is use to analysed results which show in which conditions an increased level of automation in the handheld robot improves task performance or user's satisfaction perception.

Click on https://www.cs.bris.ac.uk/~wmayol/3D-CAD-Handheld1.zip for the 3D printed models and list of materials for details of the prototype used in this report.